by Susan Rieger
INTERVIEWS WITH MS. MEIKLEJOHN (June 30, July 7)
In my two sessions with Ms. Meiklejohn alone, we talked about her brother’s death and its effect on her, her younger sister, Cordelia, with Down’s, the marriage, and Jane. She thought that Dr. Durkheim had been drawn to her in part because she had had a brother who died young of cancer. “He thought I’d understand how important his work was. I did, I do, but what he never saw, what he never understood was that James’s death ruined my childhood. It took years for me to understand that I was furious at him for dying, for leaving me alone with a grieving mother, and for occupying so much emotional space in our lives even though he was dead.” She smiled a small smile. “Six years of analysis went into that statement.” She added, “My father didn’t and doesn’t much care for Daniel, but he thought the marriage was good, evolutionarily speaking. We were different ethnicities; our children would likely be spared the afflictions of the inbred. I think he believes James’s leukemia and Cordelia’s Down’s were the product of inbreeding. He once said with grim humor, ‘We Mathers and Meiklejohns, we’re the swank Jukes and the Kallikaks.’ ”
I asked her how she thought her husband would deal with Jane’s fears and her emphatic refusal to live with him in the event of her mother’s death. “Jane’s got him right. He’s Mrs. Jellyby all over.” She said it would be helpful if I brought up the matter and discussed it with him, but that if I didn’t, she knew it would be part of this report. “I’ll make it clear, after he’s read it, that she has to go live with my father in the event I die in the next few years. He’ll of course have generous visitation, but Jane will officially ‘live’ with my father. But I don’t think it will be a problem, once she’s outlived James.” She added, smiling thinly, “And if she lives with my father, Daniel won’t have to pay support. My father wouldn’t take money from him, or from anyone, to support Jane. She’s the love of his life.” She paused. “I won’t make a big point of that, the money, that is; it’s one of those things better left unsaid, by me at least, and Daniel’s no deadbeat. He’s just a rotter. Still, there would be pecuniary benefits for him to the arrangement.” I reminded her that I could include her statement in my report. She gave a little laugh. “Well, of course you will. Why else are we talking together?”
I asked her how she felt, knowing Jane was so beloved by her grandfather, in her words, “the love of his life.” She sighed. “It is so complicated. I’ve spent years sorting out my feelings toward my parents. The short answer is that James’s death left my parents bereft, and they pulled back from me, I believe, to spare the pain another death might cause them. I don’t know that I could survive Jane’s death. And loving her as I do, I have been able to understand my parents’ terrible grief.” She continued, “So my father’s love for Jane is the happiest outcome now imaginable. I think it wonderful that he loves someone as much as he loves Jane and wonderful that he could give himself over at last to the love of a child. He didn’t miss that. Of course, I think it wonderful too that she’s half-Jewish. He’s got a streak of anti-Semitism, and Jane turns it all on its head.”
I asked her about Dr. Durkheim’s visitation rights. “I leave Jane with him now regularly when I visit my sister. I have no trouble with her staying with him when she wants to. I can’t see making her visit him, nor would he, but she would want to. He loves her in his way, and she loves him in hers.”
INTERVIEW WITH JANE AND HER FATHER (August 19)
I met with Jane and Dr. Durkheim once; it wasn’t possible to schedule a second, owing to Dr. Durkheim’s schedule. In my interview with them, they started the session by speaking about the things they did together. He is a huge sports fan and has always played recreational sports, first soccer and now squash. “I’m too big and too slow-moving to play either well, but I’m wily,” he said. Jane plays both games—her father taught her squash, and she belongs to the New Salem children’s soccer league—but her favorite athletic activity, she said, was running. He looked surprised, preferring, as he told her, the “head-to-head competition” of the other games. She shot me a quick glance, then looked at him, “The fun of squash and soccer is in winning, but the fun of running is just the running.” He started to interrupt, then stopped himself. She continued, looking at me, not him, “No one’s there to trip you up, or bong you with their racquet or kick you with their cleats. I like to win at running, I want to be the best, but I like that no one gets in my way.” He shook his head and talked about the challenge of competitive games; then seeing she was looking out the window, stopped. “Maybe you’ll change your mind,” he said, “when you’re older and the competition is better.” He turned to me. “She’s a natural athlete, much better than almost anyone else I’ve seen her age.” She answered, “Maybe I won’t play then. Maybe I’ll just run, like Atalanta.” She then let out a loud hoot. “You don’t like to run because you’re so slow and I can beat you.” She looked at me. “The first time I beat him in a running race I was 7.” He laughed. “Well, you were almost 8.”
The other thing Jane and Dr. Durkheim do together regularly is watch movies. “We’re both movie nuts,” he said. On most Sunday nights, at 7, they have Sunday Night at the Movies. They watch a video. They go to the video store and pick a film together. “Daddy has pretty good taste in movies, and since he’s seen so many more than me, I usually go with his picks.” The two of them have been doing this for about three years now. Ms. Meiklejohn rarely attends. “She likes movies; she doesn’t love them,” Jane explained. “But she was the one who picked my favorite movie for us to watch. Dirty Dancing.” Her father groaned. “I thought our favorite was The Dirty Dozen,” he said. She said to him, “No, not that, and not Cheaper by the Dozen.” He didn’t say anything for several seconds, then said, “I’m out.” “How about Twelve Angry Men?” she asked. He shook his head. They have this game they play with movie titles, playing off the words in a title. “You can use the same word a third time—I could have said Dirty Harry—but it hurts your reputation as a player,” Jane said. “Cheaper by the Dozen,” Dr. Durkheim said, “is a killer. It doesn’t go anywhere.”
Dr. Durkheim was not physically affectionate with Jane. He might tug at her braid or poke her, but otherwise he didn’t touch her. This may be the way the two of them have always been together, or it may be his response to her changing body as adolescence looms. At our joint session, neither of them raised the matter of her living arrangements in the event her mother died and neither mentioned the night she collapsed in hysterics when he suggested she might live with him.
INTERVIEW WITH DR. DURKHEIM (August 10)
I had only a single session with Dr. Durkheim alone. He was not able to schedule a second. I used it to discuss custody. I began the discussion with the obvious question: Why did he think Jane had broken down so completely when he spoke to her about living with him? He looked at me straight on, blank-faced, revealing nothing. “Isn’t that the shrink’s job?” he said. “You tell me.” I told him what I knew: that in the event of her mother’s death or inability to care for her, Jane didn’t want to live with him but with her grandfather; that she had said she’d run away if she was made to live with him; that she’d made arrangements with her mother and grandfather and they both would back her up. He started to protest, to argue with me, then stopped himself. “I’ve not been around much. Her mother has done 90% of the child raising. And she spends more time with Meiklejohn than she does with me. It’s my job. It can’t be helped.”
I asked him if he performed or had in the past performed any of the functions of a caretaking parent, such as bathing and putting her to bed at night, making doctors’ appointments for her and taking her there, arranging playdates and parties for her, attending school conferences, coaching her at sports, providing her with religious education, making her meals, buying her clothes, and the like. He responded by saying: “I’ve just told you her mother has done 90% of the child raising.”
I asked him if he would challenge a custody order that ga
ve Jane’s grandfather in effect physical custody—not legal—in the event her mother died in the next seven years. He asked what that would mean. I said that he would, of course, see her regularly, as much as he wanted or was able, and would participate in all important decisions affecting Jane, but that she would live with her grandfather. “This is so much fuss over an unlikely hypothetical,” he said. I asked him if he would challenge his wife on custody. He shook his head. I asked him why not. “I thought I explained that,” he said. I then asked him what would prompt him to challenge his father-in-law on custody. His schedule wouldn’t change. He accused me of laying a trap for him. I asked him if he wanted custody. “I love my daughter,” he said. I repeated that Jane had said she would run away if he was given custody. “She would run to her grandfather, you know,” I said, “and at that point, Mr. Meiklejohn would likely sue you for custody.” Dr. Durkheim shook his head slightly, as if batting away a mosquito. I asked him what he would do if his wife refused to sign a separation agreement unless physical custody on her death was given to her father. He sighed with irritation. “If we can’t resolve things, the judge will have to do it.” I asked him if he understood that the judge might take it on himself then to review the entire agreement. It would become in effect a contested divorce. He took that in. “I will talk to my lawyer.” He then added, “This is psychological blackmail.”
Assuming Jane would live with his wife, I asked him whether it would be important or necessary to him to include in the settlement a formal visiting schedule for him. He said no. “That’s not necessary. She’ll let me see Jane whenever I want to, whenever I can. We’ve never fought about Jane. Let’s not get mired in alternate Simchas Torahs and that crap.” I then asked whether, in the event his father-in-law had custody, he would want a formal visiting schedule. “This is ridiculous. I’m not making plans about a hypothetical future.” He then added, “I will say this. My father-in-law doesn’t care for me one whit, but he loves Jane; he’d never do anything to harm her.”
I asked him about his son, Tom, and the effect he thought the divorce would have on him. He responded as Jane had earlier said. “Why should it affect him? She’s not his mother.” In our conversation, Dr. Durkheim never referred to his wife by name but only as Jane’s mother or, more generally, “her.” I asked if he was planning to remarry in the near future. He said no. I then asked if the prospect of remarriage would have any effect on his thinking about custody. He said no again.
We had been speaking for 25 minutes. I told him that I had no more questions but I’d like to hear anything he had to say about Jane and the question of custody. “I deeply resent this intrusion into my life. I resent the suppositions behind your questions and the power you wield in resolving this dispute. I realize there’s nothing else to be done, but I object hugely, hugely, to this process.” He got up and walked out.
INTERVIEW WITH BRUCE MEIKLEJOHN (August 24)
I scheduled a meeting with Bruce Meiklejohn, Jane’s grandfather, in late August, after I had finished all the other interviews and consultations, thinking it essential before coming to any conclusions to find out what he knew about Jane’s custody preferences and what he was prepared to do on her behalf in the event of his daughter’s death. On first meeting, Mr. Meiklejohn thanked me for inviting him. “I will do anything and everything that needs to be done for my granddaughter, Jane.” He knew that Jane was worried about her mother’s death and her living arrangements in the event her mother died in the next few years. He showed me a letter she had written him in June and his reply. “I meant what I wrote. And when I told you I’d do anything and everything, I wasn’t expressing myself fully. What I should have said, what I meant to have said, was that there’s nothing, nothing I wouldn’t do for Jane.”
I told him that Jane wanted to live with him, her grandfather, if her mother died, that she had said she would run away if she had to live with her father. Mr. Meiklejohn nodded. “I know. Mia has talked to me.” I asked him if he would be willing to have Jane live with him and share custody with Dr. Durkheim. He nodded again. “I’m not saying it would be easy to share custody with Durkheim; he would, not unreasonably, resent me. I imagine he would feel humiliated publicly that I had custody, but he knows it makes no sense, absolutely no sense, for reasons completely unrelated to Jane’s fears, for him to have her live with him. He can’t do his job and be a single parent. I can. I can make myself available to Jane whenever I want to, whenever she needs me.” He stopped. “Look, I’m a businessman, I know how to get along when I want to. We’d get along. I’d make it easy for him to cooperate with me.” I asked him how he would do that. “I would not keep Jane from him; I’d give him access to my house at all times, his own key. He could come whenever he liked. I’d make sure he knew about every important event in her life; I’d include him in all celebrations. I’d put in toilets and invite him to stay at the guesthouse on Martha’s Vineyard.” He smiled. “That’s a point of contention between my daughter and me—we have a huge house with outhouses, no inside toilets. I want to fix the whole place up; she doesn’t. So we do nothing. But I’m weakening. Jane wants inside toilets.”
I asked Mr. Meiklejohn about his wife, Cindy. Would she want Jane living with them? Would it be agreeable to her? Would she find a child at this point in her life, living in her house, a nuisance? “Cindy has always been pleasant to Jane, but she has no children of her own, never wanted them, and she thinks of them generally as Martians. But she has never been and never would be unkind to Jane; that’s not in her nature. And Jane’s a very attractive and agreeable child, and Cindy likes her. But as I would make it easy for Durkheim to have Jane living in my house, I’d make it easy for Cindy too. She would not be asked to do any of the tending, no carpooling, no Saturdays at the races, no homework duty. I’d hire a wonderful nanny, wonderful tutors if needed. And I’m pretty good at homework, and I’d be the one to go to her races, meet with her teachers, set her curfew, teach her to drive stick. I’m in.” He went on. “Cindy and I now have been married almost 20 years. She understands me. She’s a good wife. She’d go along.”
I asked how he’d feel in his later years, giving up so much of his time to a young child, if it came to that. “After my son, James, died, I more or less shut down. Then Cordelia was born so seriously afflicted. Then Maria, Mia’s mother, got cancer. Dead two years later. It was a terrible decade. I remarried very soon after. I needed someone alive and healthy and not needy. Mia got the short end of the stick. I know that, but I was too sore myself to take care of her. Jane gives me a second shot. She’s very like Mia too, or the way Mia was before James died. So direct, so slyly humorous, so thoughtful and sensitive, yet resilient. I see James in her too. She is a wonderful athlete, a great runner. And she’s smart as a whip, smarter than all of us. I love that girl with all my heart.” He stopped for a second, then continued. “Look, I don’t think Mia’s going to die before Jane grows up. This is all highly speculative. We’re doing this to make sure Jane feels safe now. But if that terrible event happened, I would be there. And in some way, I could make amends to Mia, doing for her daughter what I couldn’t do, what I didn’t do for her.”
I asked him about his age and his health. He laughed. “I wondered if you’d go there, but then I said to myself, oh, yes, she’ll ask. She’s a pro. I am 68. I am in excellent health, and I will let you speak to my physician if you want. I exercise regularly, I don’t take any medicines, other than the odd Advil for my stiff right knee. My memory is pretty good. I forget names now and then without even intending to. That’s about it. My mother lived to 96, my father to 90. Both kept their health and wits. I am the youngest of six children, all still living. My oldest sibling, Jonathan, is 87 and a senior judge on the 13th Circuit. My next oldest sibling, Rebecca, is 82. She plays competitive bridge. We’re all cut from the same cloth, strong as horses, stubborn as mules. And I think Mia is cut from that cloth too. She’s really all Meiklejohn, very little Mather, except of course for the bookishn
ess.”
I asked him how he’d work out the financial arrangements with Dr. Durkheim. “There’s nothing you won’t ask, is there? Good for you. I am a rich man. I’m not Bill Gates or Warren Buffett rich, but I’ve got more than any person needs. I can easily support Jane and would, but I would work it out with her father. I had offered years ago to pay for her schooling, college, graduate school, psychoanalysis, and I stand ready to do that wherever she lives. In the event of my death, I’ve made arrangements for Cordelia’s permanent support, given a life interest in one-half of my estate to my wife, Cindy, and set up a foundation with $25 million outright, and after Cindy’s death, that half of my estate. The rest goes to Mia and Jane. Jane will be an heiress. Mia too. I’ve structured it so that Jane will have a regular income until she’s 35. After that, it’s all hers. Mia inherits immediately, and she can dispose of her estate as she wishes; I haven’t made her give it over to Jane. I did all this recently. I think it’s my eighth will in six years. It was hard for me, to give up that power, but I did it. Cindy told me I had to. She said I was becoming unattractively controlling.” He laughed. “Did you ever read Portrait of a Lady?” I nodded. “Mia gave it to me. Wonderful book. Ralph ruined Isabel, giving her all that money. It was a cruel experiment. I’m susceptible to literature; I believe in it, especially when it supports my prejudices. I want Jane to have my money, but I don’t want her to be a victim of a fortune hunter. I know Durkheim didn’t marry Mia for her money—he left Helen Fincher for Mia, and the Finchers have more money than the sultan of Dubai—but real money is a huge magnet. I’ve made Jane and Mia trustees of the foundation so they’ll get to give away money, something I have trouble doing, and they can give away their own too. Do you need to know how much money I have?” I told him I did not.